


The Wrecked & the Worried

by sky_blue_hightops



Series: The Three Evils [6]
Category: Video Blogging RPF, jacksepticeye
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Deaf Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exhaustion, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Magic, Magical Accidents, Muteness, Spells & Enchantments, The Three Evils AU, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-17 11:06:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17559197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_blue_hightops/pseuds/sky_blue_hightops
Summary: More than Marvin's sense of hearing was stolen that night.(The Three Evils AU.)





	The Wrecked & the Worried

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song of the same name by Natewantstobattle because, well, it fits really well. Also it's a great song.
> 
> Takes place a couple weeks after the main three fics.

"I'm..." Chase sighed. "I'm worried about him."

JJ followed his gaze. Across the living room, Marvin hunched over his well-loved spellbook. There was no denying the way Marvin's hands shook as he leafed through the pages, or the way the temperature in the room had dropped dramatically when the magician had entered. JJ felt a frown tug at his mouth, and shaped his clumsy hands into words he used to be able to say out loud. _He didn't take it well._

Chase ran nervous hands through his shock of brown hair, face replicating JJ's frown. "I know, and honestly, I would've been worried if he had, but...I dunno, J. I get this feeling he's gonna do something without...thinking it through."

JJ twitched his fingers, thinking of the words he wanted to say and realizing he didn't know how to convey them. Chase wordlessly slid over the pen and pad that had taken up residence on the kitchen table, and JJ accepted them gratefully.  _He certainly is inclined to make brash decisions, and he wields considerable power, but he has good_   _judgement_.JJ considered Marvin carefully.  _All the same, I shall keep an eye on him. He has lost..._ JJ tapped the pen to the paper.  _Well, he's lost his world._ He certainly knew that feeling.

"I know." A quiver in Chase's voice was the only betrayal of his fear. It was a long ways from the terror his eyes used to reflect any time they landed on one of the three brothers...affected. Now they only held a familiar sadness, one that spoke of a pain from months past, one that spoke of a family shattered. "It sucks."

JJ's hand found his brother's. He couldn't find a reply. He didn't know if he ever could.

***

He knew the others stared. He knew he was, objectively, taking it the worst. He wasn't as resilient as the rest. He was weaker, and reliant on his magic, and  _hated_ change. (Simplifying their trauma down to just a 'change' in their lives was...uncomfortable. But the concept applied.) 

But he was  _scared_.

No longer did he have the voices of the others and the sounds of daily life to distract, to ground, to comfort. No longer did he have mundane noises like the coffee maker, or Chase yelling at a new video game, or Jackie's fists hitting their punching bag to fill his head and keep him present. Only when he lost his hearing did he realize how much he relied on it. And rely on it, he did.

The spellbooks draped across his desk mocked him. He could feel them tempt his magic when he so much as thought in their direction, the words scrawled in the margins calling out to unlock the powers within him. He wanted to sing, and the words living in his books wanted to be sung.

And sure, he could keep the beat, his fingers drumming on the surface of his desk, but he couldn't hear the melody. His mouth knew the intimate feel of the words he had already mastered, but what of new spells? What of every single other thing he had yet to learn? What good was a magician who denied the fluidity of their magic? For it was like water, rushing and filling and spilling over, seeking new outlets and new shapes to hold, seeking new canyons to carve and paths to wear away. His magic was hungry, and he was no longer sure if he could keep up.

The hum of his powers in his chest was a warm, solid presence on good days and a jittery, scalding burn on bad days. It bubbled up sour when he lost control, acidic and nauseous, and since the... _incident_ his control was held together with nothing more than shaky breaths and clenched fists. 

He breathed in, and out, and let his lungs expand and his shoulders roll back.

He didn't need his hearing. He'd learn new spells, one way or another. His trials and errors would just be...potentially more risky, that was all. 

Something uncomfortably cold coiled around his heart and refused to let go.

***

It went alright, at first. He started with spells he already knew, fingers catching on their well-worn pages like they had hundreds of times before. He cast spells, and learned to taste the hum of his magic without hearing it. It was still resting just under his skin, eager and stubborn, a parasite with a willing host.

He moved on to new spells, just small ones, ones he had found no real use for before - spells to know if anyone crossed the threshold of his room, or to enhance the vibrations the TV or the radio made (if he closed his eyes, he could  _almost_ hear the noise that had once accompanied that buzz). Easy charms, with minimal risk. Certainly nothing that would rebound and harm someone if he flubbed the pronunciation of this noun or that verb. He made mistakes, and learned from them, and learned the ways his mouth needed to move around new words instead of how they should sound out loud.

Even in his caution, in his meticulous attention to safety (he always cast spells alone, he always had shields in place, he always made sure dangerous or delicate things were tied down-), he could feel Chase's worry like a tangible presence, almost like a magic of its own. It tangled in his legs and snagged his arms and he couldn't so much as move without feeling it pin him down like a mouse in a cage - he was supposed to be the predator, not the prey. His brother's unfounded concerns were, while sweet to some extent, suffocating.

He shook his head, briefly. His thoughts had the tendency to get away from him, even more so when entirely blocking out the world was merely a flip of the light switch away. He snorted. A pair of noise-cancelling headphones and a blindfold was all it took to mostly-incapacitate two of the strongest Septics, now. Somehow, their baby brother was now  _less_ vulnerable than him and Jackie...

Again, his focus! He grumbled to himself, flicking through the pages of one of his oldest books with probably more force than necessary, the pages wrinkling slightly under his touch. His mask was pulled up from his face to rest on top of his head, tufts of hair sticking up through the eye-holes, and his cape lay strewn on his bed from when he had flung it off in a fit of frustration earlier.

He set the book down, slipping a bookmark between the pages and shutting it before flinging himself on his bed and rolling over to pull the cape around himself. The fabric was heavy and warm and smelled of his magic, and he allowed his eyes to close for just a second before snaking an arm out from the depths of the black fabric to snag the pile of clothes on the foot of his bed.

Even before losing his hearing, his sense of smell was especially heightened - good scents or simply those associated with good things had an instantly-calming effect. A bad day could be turned around completely by the smell of JJ cooking dinner, or a good whiff of Jackie's cologne (the man used far too much, definitely, but it was overpowering in the best way possible). A cup of coffee shoved under his nose by Henrik could pull him from spiraling thoughts just the same as the smell of mint that seemed to follow Chase around. So, only logically, he had  _borrowed_ from the others' closets - one of Jackie's hoodies, a shirt from Chase, Henrik's old scarf, one of JJ's sweaters (there was also an assorted cluster of socks, but those were less to do with comfort and more because he had promised Henrik to help with the laundry and matching socks was a quiet, repetitive task). The result was a bundle of clothes and scents pretty much guaranteed to provide comfort.

He tugged the clothes closer, pressing his face to the fabric and ignoring the burn in the back of his throat and the prick of tears at the corners of his eyes. Mint and coffee and ink and rain all mixed together into something uniquely  _home_ , and soothed the pain in his chest before even a single tear could fall. He breathed slow and deep, and stomped down the panic that came with not being able to hear the whisper of his own breathing.

It took almost ten minutes to escape the siren's call of his bed, but his goals for the day were nagging his conscience - particularly, there was this one offensive spell he had been wanting to try, and not for a lack of needing it. Maybe if he had known it before… It wasn’t any good to think like that, but the idea haunted him regardless.

***

Green sparks fizzed out between his fingertips for the forty-seventh time in the past hour-and-a-half, and Marvin growled in anger. He was almost completely sure he was mispronouncing one of the words, but he _couldn't know which one it was because he_ **_couldn't hear what he was saying_ **-

The sparks turned to a mini inferno in the palm of his hand unbidden, and he stared into its flickering form for a second before snuffing it between his palms. He **would** get this right, he had to.

He bit out the beginning words of the spell, immediately feeling the rise of power within him flood every cell of his body. It strained against his hold on it, ready to be released, and his head spun slightly. A quiet laugh bubbled up in his chest, both from the rush of power and the immense relief of tapping into his impatient magic, and for the first time in weeks he felt almost _whole_ again.

The words tumbled from his mouth, vowels twisted and consonants cut short by blinded lips. His hands were familiar in their motions and gestures, and he took comfort in the ice that threaded through his veins and the fire that raged behind his eyes. He could see so clearly, in his mind, the intended outcome of the spell - to spill blood, to draw tears, to drain hope. This one was darker than the others he knew, a kind of magic bent to hurt the body and the mind. It could be fueled with both good intentions or bad, and he had no shortage of either playing tug-of-war with his conscience.

His voice raised in volume, a whisper shadowed by a scream or a scream shadowed by a whisper, reaching the apex of the spell. It was in this exact moment, the height of the potential energy that was his magic when restrained, when he was no longer  _Marvin_ or  _magician_ or even  _ego_ but some unbounded, electric presence defined only by his powers and all the ways in which they could envelop him. He was a slave to his magic, and his magic was a slave to him, and combined they were a conflict never resolved but always balanced.

His feet, planted firmly on the floor, could no longer feel the floor below them. His skin tingled numbly, or maybe not at all, and if he could once see anything beyond the magic in the air he certainly couldn't now. A new wave of power ebbed and flowed, and he reached the last phrases - the most important phrases - with a confidence he thought he had lost forever. A smile tugged at his lips as something slid into place in his chest, some misplaced feeling of ambition and pride that burned so sweetly. He spoke the last sentences, almost at the point of sealing the spell and releasing his volatile magic, still pushing and pushing to be freed -

Then a hand gripped his wrist, whispers of someone's warm breath harsh against the shell of his ear, startling a mispronounced syllable out of his mouth, and his magic recoiled like a broken rubber band, and he knew he was  _screaming_.

The hand let go instantly but his focus was shattered and his control now nothing more than a memory. The magic in his blood had turned to acid, angry at Marvin's supposed betrayal, angry at being mistreated and angry to be released, and he could do nothing except crumple to his knees and pull, pull, pull at his hair and his clothes, his fingers not fully his own and the sobs wracking his body barely able to leave his stuttering, choking throat because _everything hurt_.

He couldn't breathe. There were hands in his hair, gentle, tugging his own free from their death grip, but every inch of his skin was raw and exposed like a live wire and he flinched backwards as far as he could without igniting more pain from where his body was in contact with the carpet. The fabric of his clothes was like the harshest sandpaper, or a kitchen grater, and the weight of his tears on his cheeks caused enough fractured pain to send him spiraling - he had to regain control, had to rein in his powers before he wasn't the only one in agony -

The ground shook minutely at the beat of someone's soft but fast footsteps, and that same someone dropped heavily before him. He prepared to reel back again, unwilling to be touched, but before he could bring himself to grip the floor and drag himself backwards there was a fistful of sweet-smelling fabric under his nose.

The tremor of his muscles eased just barely, and he inhaled deeper. Mint-rain-coffee-ink, cologne and dried blood, printer paper and gunpowder and cooking oil, cinnamon and cocoa and tea leaves - He drew in another shaky breath, held it in his pained lungs, and willed his focus to return. He blinked his eyes open, wincing as light prompted pain to bloom across their backs, but at least now he could see past the darkness that had been encroaching on his line of sight.

A smaller, cooler hand brushed the back of his overheated one hesitantly, as if its owner was afraid of hurting Marvin, but the contact no longer sparked quite so painfully against his nerves so he reached out and laced their fingers together. He drank up the positive touch eagerly, tears still streaming down his face. "H-hurts," he rasped. The hand in his squeezed once, its counterpart drifting up to skim its thumb across his cheek and wipe the tears away. Somewhere very far away, JJ's worried face swam above him, blue eyes meeting Marvin's, with Chase's equally-worried one calling to someone else -

He released the air in his lungs, and let his eyes slip shut.

***

He never actually lost consciousness.

He hadn't been able to open his eyes, utterly exhausted from casting the spell and the effects of its interruption, but he could feel things in flashes, impressions: the others' hands on his face and their footsteps as they tried to rouse him; someone's (Jackie's?) arms picking him up to take him to what he assumed was Henrik's office (the second time in as many weeks...the thought of Henrik's disappointment made him no more eager to 'wake' up), his hand being pressed to a chest, humming with a voice he couldn't hear.

He couldn't tell what they were saying, or if the vibrations were words at all, but that combined with the warm hand holding his in place calmed him into a deep sleep.

***

Jackie's frown deepened as Marvin's hand twitched against his chest, but the man lying in bed didn't stir. "I-" The hero paused, then closed his mouth. For what good was talking? The brewing mixture of anger and resentment and guilt in him wasn't known by any name. "I should've-"

He could hear Henrik shift in the chair next to Jackie's, both of them parked by Marvin's bedside for the time being. Chase and JJ had been sitting with the sleeping magician in the hours after the spell-gone-wrong and had since left to get some sleep. "You should have what, Jackie? Should have known he was trying a dangerous spell? Very few things can stop our Marvin once he sets his mind on something, der Narr." A light sigh, the sound of the hem of Marvin's blanket shifting between Henrik's fingers. "The only thing we can do is pick up the pieces."

He rubbed Marvin's chilled fingers, a far cry from the fever that had struck the magician about an hour after the spell, up until breaking a few hours ago. "Henrik...what would-"

"-you all do without me?" He could practically hear the smug smile on his brother's lips and replied with one of his own. "You would have this house on fire after a day." Henrik's hand brushed his shoulder, uncertain if their boundaries had changed, but Jackie merely leaned into the touch. "We shall warn him against learning strong spells when he wakes, at least for some time." 

Jackie took a deep breath, then let his smile turn wry before dropping it altogether. "Everything's changed so...fast."

"I know." Henrik's weary, almost-disbelieving tone would haunt him for months. "I know."


End file.
